Have YOU Hugged a Germy Moppet Today?

Photo Credit: notanartist via Compfight cc I may have spoken too soon about enjoying my "much-needed" day off. I had gone to the gym earlier that day and assumed the soreness in my body was from that, but when I laid in bed and felt that familiar tickle in the back of my throat, I knew I was in trouble. By morning, it was official: I was sick.

Now, the last time I got sick was at the end of the Victoria Fringe, but this was due to sheer exhaustion and I was over it within two days. But this was different. This was probably the worst cold I'd ever had in my adult life. My body was sore, I got chills, my nose was runny, I was coughing up a storm and would intermittently lose my voice completely. Oh and Aunt Flo decided to pop by for a visit just for good measure. Because timing.

And because the Universe is a HI-larious, this all happened on back-to-back 3-show days.

How could this have happened? Where in the world could I have caught this cold? I haven't been around any sick people. Only hundreds and hundreds of tiny, adorable little children who love to high five and surprise you with hugs... Oh.

Note to self: buy hand sanitizer.

The thing about being an independent artist is that you don't get sick days. There is no understudy waiting in the wings. If we can't do the show, that's it. There is no performance and we don't get paid. So, you suck it up, dope yourself up with meds, and pray adrenaline pulls you through just one more show. It, after all, must go on.

I've been lucky. We do have microphones so I haven't had to throw out my voice in echo-y gyms and we've had some nice accommodations so I could rest up in the evening. But it's been an incredibly frustrating experience. I'm a perfectionist and I hate not being able to give my 100%. I reached my breaking point yesterday when I tried to sing during soundcheck and could barely squeak out the words - did I mention we also have to sing in the show? The sounds coming out of my mouth are alien and weird. My ears have been plugged up so I'm not hearing things properly either. It's infuriating to feel like your body isn't cooperating.

Today, I finally feel slightly better. It's not great, but it's better. And I've been finding ways to sing around my normal register so I can at least hit the notes without cracking.

We had a show this morning in a lovely bilingual school and it was probably my favorite performance of the run so far. Now we're all packed up and on our way to Red Deer. One performance there this afternoon and another tomorrow morning and we'll finally be on our way back to Vancouver for a few days of rest. Hopefully it will be enough time for me to shake this thing.

If anyone has any vocal tips, I'd be happy to hear all about them in the comment section.

On the Road Again

Written a few days ago, just posting it now. Today I am enjoying a much needed day of rest in Calgary, AB. No show and no driving. Just some glamorous glamorous laundry and catching up on bills. Ahhhhh, the life of a touring performer! Enjoying the rest while I can since tomorrow is a 3 show day. Fortunately the performances are all at the same school so we won't have to pack up in between shows.

Our first week of shows for The Little Prince was in the Vancouver area. It was pretty nice to be able to go back home, especially after a two show day. Early on I hit what Tara Travis affectionately dubbed TYA-lag. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, TYA stands for Theatre for Young Audiences. The lag part refers to jet lag.

As if getting over the New Brunswick to British Columbia jet lag wasn't enough, here I was feeling loopy for a completely different reason. On show days, my alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for a 7:30 local pick-up. Then we head to a school, set up, perform, pack up, have lunch, drive to another school and do it all over again. While this gets me home by 3-3:30, it means I'm already passing out by dinner time. I'm not much of a morning person, so this has been quite the adjustment.

On Friday, as we left a school in Langley, we officially started the "touring" portion for this production. We arrived in Vernon for our first community show and here's where I discovered some major differences between the school performances and our public ones.

School shows typically take place in a gym. We have about half an hour of set-up time and our lighting design consists of finding a guy with keys to turn off a bank of fluorescents. Community shows normally take place in a theatre. We get a proper tech time (usually around 11 a.m. Which is downright civilized) dressing room and they put us up in hotels. In Vernon, we got an incredible fruit basket that we took with us to munch on the road. In Nelson, we got chocolate and wine.

You'd think the perks would make the community shows my favorite, but that's not necessarily so. I like the energy that emanates from the school shows. Community shows are filled with parents and kids, so they tend to be a bit more reserved. School shows have a bit of rowdiness that I enjoy. They're also more intimate since the kids sit on the floor and we're not separated by any kind of stage.

All that said, my favorite part of any show is the Q & A we have at the end. I love hearing all the questions the kids have and hate that we have such a short time we can't get to them all. But that is a blog post for another day.

Ready or Not

I was hoping my next post would be about all my new projects coming up in 2015, but for the past two weeks I have been absolutely swamped with rehearsals for Monster Theatre's adaptation of The Little Prince, a family show that we will be touring in schools and communities across Alberta and British Columbia. It's been a quick learning curve. My days are spent at rehearsals, my nights are filled with learning lines and songs. Even my day off was taken up with a costume/props shopping trip. As it's been months since I last performed on a regular basis, I feel out of shape doing such a physically demanding show - you try running around a gym 6 or 7 times with a bushel of birds. And I still feel shaky with the text.

Trust me, I'm not complaining. I am thrilled to be working with such amazing people on a fun show that will make people happy. But I simply cannot believe that we are already previewing the show tomorrow and opening the next day.

I find myself falling into that silly "if only" trap that I am sure many theatre practitioners fall into: If only I had one more week to rehearse. If only I had one more day. If on I had a few more hours!

Well, no point in worrying about that, I guess. We are professionals. We will make it work.

This show is going to be beautiful. It's incredibly tech heavy with lots of projections and music. My partner Tara Travis is an absolute gem and I love working with Ryan Gladstone as a director because he has such a strong vision for what he wants to see onstage. It's all going to fall into place. It always does.

Now to get used to those early morning school shows...

The Little Prince

I'm not a fan of winter. Scratch that. I'm not a fan of cold. I'm the kind of person who will grab her hair dryer and blast it under the covers to warm up the blankets before going to bed. In July. Though I got to work on some fun projects last winter in Ottawa (like Lucy in You're a Dead Man, Charlie Brown! and an alien in Pop Fiction), they did not make up for the bitter bitter cold.

So when the opportunity to head out to Vancouver for an entire winter doing children's theatre presented itself, I jumped at the chance. And the fact that I would get to work with some of my favourite Fringe folk was just icing on the cake.

At the end of this month, I fly off to the aptly named Terminal City to start rehearsals and a tour of a new adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince with the fabulously funny folks at Monster Theatre.

I'm very excited for a variety of reasons. For one, Monster Shows are always a ton of fun and I look forward to getting an inside look at their creation process with Ryan Gladstone at the helm as our director. For another, it will be nice to do a show where I actually get to talk to someone else on stage. And what a someone else! I will be playing the Little Prince and the incredible Tara Travis will be playing everyone else. I remember the first time I saw Tara on stage, a few years ago, at the Toronto Fringe in The Shakespeare Show. I was just blown away by her ability to transition seamlessly from character to character. Now I get the best seat in the house to see how it's done! And if that wasn't enough, our touring duo is actually going to be a touring trio with Fringe veteran Jon Paterson as our stage manager. This is going to be such a good time! Oh and I've been told that I will actually get to stay true to my own roots, as well as the book's by doing some of the show in French. If you're a long time reader of this blog, you know how important that is to me.

But it's not all stars and roses (see what I did there?) The company wants to up the production values and build some new puppets for the show and they can't do that without your help.

Click on the widget to watch the video - see how I totally beat out an old lady for the role of the Little Prince - and find out how you can help. If you haven't finished your Holiday shopping (and I know you haven't), your donation could leave you with some pretty cool gifts to give away, like a custom puppet video for your loved ones.

In the meantime, check out this up-to-date tour schedule to see if we're coming to a community near you.